My definition: Religions are rules designed by men to control society, belief is a natural response to our environment that gets taken advantage of by religions.

all your belief is designed to do is disregard other people's beliefs. Fred Phelps has a belief too... you need to be able to demonstrate why your belief is true and his is false.

What are you doing if you're not disregarding people's beliefs. Double standards really get on my nerves. When my sweety tries it she don't get by with it either.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

My definition: Religions are rules designed by men to control society, belief is a natural response to our environment that gets taken advantage of by religions.

Sorry, but that doesn't make clear how you tell the difference between the two.

If person A says "I believe X" and person B says "I believe Y", how do you tell which one is truthfully expressing their natural response to their environment, and which one is twisting their beliefs to try to control society?

For example: how can I be sure that when you say "we must eliminate greed" you are not taking advantage of my natural tendency towards sharing by coming up with a rule with the intention of controlling me?

I believe you would know if I was trying to control you. It would sound something like give now or die in hell. Then you could see me riding around town in my Bentley, with my fly suit I bought with your money, my gold rings, and expensive shoes, I bought those with your money too.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

noun excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions.

Just because something is similar to greed in some way, that doesn't make it greed. Are you honest enough to admit it when you're wrong about something, junebug?

I haven't changed the meaning the first time. That's the same definition I've been using. It says "especially in the case", not "in all cases."

I tried to modify that post and for some reason it kept telling me "the site had reached capacity to try again later."

There wouldn't be so much trash if people weren't gluttonous.

I have admitted before when I was wrong don't have a problem with that. I'm not convinced I'm wrong and the more and more I think about it, the more I'm convinced I'm right. You guys won't check out the information I have provided; leaving your objections and disagreements under scrutiny. Speaking of I have to go read an article Jag posted and call this one a day.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

I don't think anyone is arguing that greed does not contribute to problems. I think they're arguing that you can't blame every problem on greed.

Also, laziness is not greed. Laziness is when a person doesn't want to put in the effort to do something, whereas greed is the desire for more of something than they need or that is good for them. To put it another way, greed motivates people to do things in order to satisfy their greed, whereas laziness de-motivates people from doing things. You could probably argue that they're both kinds of selfish behavior, but that doesn't make them mean the same thing.

I just wanted folks to see how you disagree with me even when I'm so obviously right. Your disapproval is biased and unreliable.

That right there is comedic gold.

junebug, I suggest you take a break. Stand up. Have a glass of water. Go out onto your front porch, take a deep breath of air and stretch out. Because right now, you are talking crazy talk and need to clear your head.

jb, read the story linked here before telling us again how wrong we are please. Read the whole story, and comment on the whole story. Do not pick one isolated thing in it and make an observation vaguely in reference to it that completely misses the point, actually read the whole thing and then tell us how this fits your stated position.

This is another supporting example for my previous question that you have not yet addressed.

I read the story and I just don't see your point. That is a religious belief. The kind we both agree are bad.

I tell you what nobody has proved my point as good as nam. He is not a believer but he is a self proclaimed a$$ hole. That way and he has no belief in God, that proves my point once and for all. People are going to be a$$holes whether they believe in God or not.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

I just wanted folks to see how you disagree with me even when I'm so obviously right. Your disapproval is biased and unreliable.

That right there is comedic gold.

junebug, I suggest you take a break. Stand up. Have a glass of water. Go out onto your front porch, take a deep breath of air and stretch out. Because right now, you are talking crazy talk and need to clear your head.

Thanks screwtape but I'm fine. I was just looking at the time and thought my, my I've been at it awhile today. Trying to get caught up which is getting harder since replies come up faster than I can get to them. I do think adversarial opinions are biased and unreliable. I have been accused of the same thing here and I survived.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

I don't want to restart the whole argument over what the word "religious" means. However if we are going to communicate, we have to use words. And words have to have consistent, agreed upon meanings. Please understand that while your definition of religious is not exactly unique, it is rare and you are the only one here using that definition. Please do not insist the rest of us accomodate you in that regard. Please find a term that more explicitly describes what you mean.

jb, read the story linked here before telling us again how wrong we are please. Read the whole story, and comment on the whole story. Do not pick one isolated thing in it and make an observation vaguely in reference to it that completely misses the point, actually read the whole thing and then tell us how this fits your stated position.

This is another supporting example for my previous question that you have not yet addressed.

I read the story and I just don't see your point. That is a religious belief. The kind we both agree are bad.

What, specifically, makes what's in that article a religious belief and not just a belief?

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I tell you what nobody has proved my point as good as nam. He is not a believer but he is a self proclaimed a$$ hole. That way and he has no belief in God, that proves my point once and for all. People are going to be a$$holes whether they believe in God or not.

That really doesn't prove your point, assuming that the point is 'believing in god is not a bad thing'. All it proves is that one need not 'believe in god' to be an a**hole.

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"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

It seems like the only way junebug can hold onto her "belief" in a benevolent supernatural diety is to try to blame all bad things on human beings. And junebug has decided that everything bad that people do is caused by "greed", even if the action is done out of innocence or ignorance.

It is perfectly possible to make a mistake--or to just have plain old bad luck. A friend was pregnant and developed a clot in her umbilical cord. The baby died inside her, and she never got over it. Maybe she should not have smoked dope back in college, or maybe she should have exercised more. She will question herself forever.

Not everything is someone's fault. But mistakes and bad luck don't fit very well with a benevolent god who loves us all, does it?

A young woman chokes on some food at dinner and dies, leaving her husband permanently damaged by grief. He is unable to work, starts drinking and neglects his children. How is that due to greed, or bad religion?

An active young guy trips and falls down some stairs and ends up paralyzed from the neck down. He finds this very difficult to cope with, despite many friends, good social services and modern medical care. He becomes severely depressed. How is his situation due to greed, or bad religion?

It is hard to blame greed in all cases of human behaving badly. This is another example that has been documented fairly well:

An isolated tribal group hunts food by digging a big pit and driving the animals into it by setting fire to the forest. Then they share food freely with all the members of the tribe, eating all they they can and leaving the rest to rot or to scavengers.

After a couple hundred years, some animals are extinct and the forest has been destroyed. They have permanently damaged the forest and upset the ecosystem forever. The tribe starves.

If they had better weapons, they would not have to use pits for hunting, but then they would have better weapons. They are not agressive and don't need sophisticated weapons. The forest has always provided, and they don't need to change. They have been doing the pit thing for centuries. But eventually it ruins their society.

Innocently, without any greed at all, their bare-bones subsistence hunter-gatherer lifestyle has destroyed their livelihood. All without religion and without any particular "belief" other than to do what their ancestors did. Just ignorance about the long-term consequences of their actions.

What are you doing if you're not disregarding people's beliefs. Double standards really get on my nerves. When my sweety tries it she don't get by with it either.

You dont seem to get it. You want me to simply accept your beliefs however wrong they may be, while also disregarding Fred Phelps beliefs BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE WITH THEM. You think his beliefs are bad, he thinks your beliefs are bad. I disregard both your beliefs if theyre not grounded in fact. You are the one applying the double standard.

Would it be inappropriate of me to list just on this page (17) all the negative and insulting qualities of Junebug (her request on page 16) so she can see how, in my opinion, she's been more insulting than my combined comments to her on this topic?

The expression of an opinion does need to be assessed separately from its actual content. A statement is not rendered invalid simply because it contains emotionally-charged language, profanity, or LOLcat pictures.

I would extend that question to:"How does that belief - and ONLY that belief - alter either your actions or other beliefs?"

Sorry Dawg that one just don't make sense to me. I did not say it alters your actions. In fact I have said the opposite. This was laid to rest pages ago

There we go. Junebug says that "belief does not alter your actions" - people will act THE SAME whether they happen to have her belief or not.

So "belief is not a bad thing". And "belief is not a good thing". It is an irrelevant thing.

I wish we HAD laid it to rest.....but watch now as Junebug comes back and asserts that - despite belief having NO effect on what a person does - it is STILL always a good thing, and never a bad thing, to have.

My definition: Religions are rules designed by men to control society, belief is a natural response to our environment that gets taken advantage of by religions.

Sorry, but that doesn't make clear how you tell the difference between the two.

If person A says "I believe X" and person B says "I believe Y", how do you tell which one is truthfully expressing their natural response to their environment, and which one is twisting their beliefs to try to control society?

For example: how can I be sure that when you say "we must eliminate greed" you are not taking advantage of my natural tendency towards sharing by coming up with a rule with the intention of controlling me?

I believe you would know if I was trying to control you. It would sound something like give now or die in hell. Then you could see me riding around town in my Bentley, with my fly suit I bought with your money, my gold rings, and expensive shoes, I bought those with your money too.

Two points.

Firstly, you clearly have very, very little concept of how easy it is to control someone without overt threats. You can control people with nothing but positive reinforcement, with nothing but treats. You can even control someone by showing them nothing but loving actions. How, for example, do you believe child molesters groom and catch their victims? Just saying "you would know if someone tries to control you" flies in the face of everything we know about psychology, advertising, politics, and so on.

Secondly - and once again - you missed the point. You've taken the easy way out and ignored the whole point of the question. Assume, for the sake of argument, that you are saying "we must eliminate greed". And Nam (if he'll excuse me picking a random name) is saying "we must NOT eliminate greed". But both of you are using the same tone, same level of emotion, and - so far as I can see - display the same standard of living. How DO I know if either of you is expressing their natural response? Perhaps BOTH of you honestly feel that what you are saying is a quite correct and natural position to take. Or perhaps both of you are cynically trying to exploit me.

How do I tell what a person really believes?

I ask you that because you appear to know the answer: YOU have natural beliefs, everyone ELSE is twisted by religion. But how do you KNOW that? Maybe you are twisted without knowing it - you must surely admit that is possible, because if you are saying "I KNOW when I am being twisted", then you must accept that everyone ELSE in the world, who you claim are being twisted by religion, must ALSO know it is happening.

How do you explain the fact that 99% of the people in the world are KNOWINGLy allowing religion to twist what they naturally know is right? Because that is the position that you have to support, unless you either admit that YOU could yourself have been twisted by religion without knowing it.....or if you can clearly explain the foolproof method you use to determine what a person's natural beliefs are.

- - - - -

I suspect that you don't actually read my posts properly anymore Junebug. If that's the case I'd appreciate you letting me know, as I have been wasting a lot of time preparing careful responses to you.

My definition: Religions are rules designed by men to control society, belief is a natural response to our environment that gets taken advantage of by religions.

all your belief is designed to do is disregard other people's beliefs. Fred Phelps has a belief too... you need to be able to demonstrate why your belief is true and his is false.

Not to mention I have not disregarded belief in God, I disregard their religion.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

Since you always check your facts, I want you to state exactly what facts you have that support this assertion. Or you can admit that this is your unsupported opinion. Up to you.

Let me tell you something buster, my patience is gone with you. Do you right down and keep a record of every source of information that you keep stored in your brain. You expect me to go back 30 years and remember sources.

What pisses me off the most is I have given sources; have you checked any of them? I'm not giving them to you guys anymore. They are back there go find them yourself.

Now my adrenalines off again and this time it's out of anger.

You just made yourself look like a fool!!!

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

Not to mention I have not disregarded belief in God, I disregard their religion.

You have disregarded their beliefs, their god "hates fags," your god does not. You believe in the same god.So we either have:

"God hates fags"

or

"God does not hate homosexuals"

How do you determine which one is true? And as has been stated over and over again, your usage of religion is incorrect, it would be nice if you would use it correctly or use the word you actually mean. You have created a belief system about your god, thus you have created a religion; with the same amount of evidence that Fred Phelps has for his beliefs. Why should I listen to your belief about god while ignoring his? youre making contradictory claims.

Very well. I will stop requesting evidence for your beliefs in this thread. And I assume that in the "debate about EVIDENCE" thread, you will actively engage to critically examine the EVIDENCE. Fair's fair Junebug - if you don't want to talk evidence here 'cos its not appropriate, I expect you to do so in the evidence thread.

Please stop with this baseless victimhood. As I've said several times in the debate thread - YOU can decide what the criteria is for evidence. I'm getting rather fed up of you telling me I'm doing something I've clearly not done.

I'll say it one more time.

Junebug. YOU can choose what type of statements are acceptable as evidence of a claim in our debate.

But you have to allow me to apply that same criteria to any other claim that might be made - unless you are requesting that YOUR claims should somehow be treated differently from anyone else's? See your last statement in red? That is exactly what YOU are refusing to do - to apply the same standards of evidence to ALL claims being made. So please stop pretending to be a martyr - its YOU that is trying to twist and get special exmptions for your own claims.

I don't give a toss what you are like, frankly. We'll never meet, so I have no issue. I accept you have your beliefs - jolly good! You have a belief in god, a belief in greed, super stuff!

So....I expect you will now STOP trying to present evidence for your belief that "greed is bad, m'kay?". Why do you keep banging on about it and trying to present all this evidence, Junebug? Can't you accept me as I am? Why do you keep trying to challenge MY beliefs?

First of all I am not your victim, although I don't blame you for playing that card, but it like your many other worn out debate tactics it's obvious.

Second of all I have never challenged your beliefs; you challenge mine.

Third, we have met, no not physically, but intellectually we have definitely met.

Not to mention I have not disregarded belief in God, I disregard their religion.

You have disregarded their beliefs, their god "hates fags," your god does not. You believe in the same god.So we either have:

"God hates fags"

or

"God does not hate homosexuals"

How do you determine which one is true? And as has been stated over and over again, your usage of religion is incorrect, it would be nice if you would use it correctly or use the word you actually mean. You have created a belief system about your god, thus you have created a religion; with the same amount of evidence that Fred Phelps has for his beliefs. Why should I listen to your belief about god while ignoring his? youre making contradictory claims.

I have answered this question already Gawd go back there and find it, please.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

Careful - some responses to you that would deserve your attention wouldn't necessarily be in the form of a question. I suggest simply reading all responses and determining if you need to reply on a post-by-post basis.

Thanks Dawg but I got this. All Questions need to be answered, hell I answer them and get told I don't answer them, that's what I'm trying to avoid.

There is nothing "simple" about reading these responses!!!

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

Greed is not having what you need it's having way more to the extinct that others have none. You do not need way more than you need to survive.

Not exactly. Greed is an instinct, basically "me first". I get to see an example of greed every time I feed my cats. To a human, them pushing each other out of the way is greedy, but to a cat, which has its instincts telling it, "there may not be enough food if you don't get your share first and eat more than you need", it's perfectly natural. Human greed goes above and beyond the greed instinct, it's true, but it's still an outgrowth of that initial instinct.

Quote from: junebug72

Fear can be beneficial but not in the case of how we humans feel about dying. That's the fear I'm talking about that helps bad religions spread their hatred.

That greater fear is an outgrowth of the fear instinct, just as human greed is an outgrowth of the greed instinct. However, fear of death by itself is not a bad thing (if we weren't afraid of dying, we wouldn't take steps to try to avoid it or prevent it).

Quote from: junebug72

I believe in God because I don't believe in luck. That's the only reason I believe in God. I may define God as loving and caring because I'm loving and caring but that's not "why" I believe.

What do you mean by that, that you don't believe in luck? There's several ways you could mean this.

Jaime I'm very frustrated this morning so you let it mean what you think it means. If you use what you learned in school about defining words with the sentence around it I'm sure you'll come up with something.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

I have answered this question already Gawd go back there and find it, please.

you have not, you have made another unfounded claim to support your unfounded claim.

Yes I did. If you really want me to go back there and find it for you I will but it's going to make you look dumb and lazy. Here's a clue, it was a reply to Jag.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

I don't think anyone is arguing that greed does not contribute to problems. I think they're arguing that you can't blame every problem on greed.

Also, laziness is not greed. Laziness is when a person doesn't want to put in the effort to do something, whereas greed is the desire for more of something than they need or that is good for them. To put it another way, greed motivates people to do things in order to satisfy their greed, whereas laziness de-motivates people from doing things. You could probably argue that they're both kinds of selfish behavior, but that doesn't make them mean the same thing.

Ok, sounds good J.

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Hope this day finds you doing well... prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. Maya

Since you always check your facts, I want you to state exactly what facts you have that support this assertion. Or you can admit that this is your unsupported opinion. Up to you.

Let me tell you something buster, my patience is gone with you. Do you right down and keep a record of every source of information that you keep stored in your brain. You expect me to go back 30 years and remember sources.

I've added back in the specific question I asked, about the specific statement you made.....I wonder why you didn't include that in your quoting?

Nope. I don't keep a record of where I heard or learned everything I know. But what I DO do, is make damn sure that when I decide to go on record with a very specific statement - such as "greedy drivers are bad drivers and cause more traffic accidents" - I pause, and see if my memory was correct, by - oh, I don't know - checking to see if there actually WAS any fact behind that statement.

But sure - no problem. You can't at present recall where you got that information from. What matters more, perhaps, is what you are going to do about it now.

Are you going to go off, look it up, and return with some evidence to support your statement?Are you going to go off, look it up, find NO evidence to support the statement, and then withdraw that statement?Or are you going to ignore the issue, claim its not important, and move on to your next unsubstantiated assertion?

What pisses me off the most is I have given sources; have you checked any of them? I'm not giving them to you guys anymore. They are back there go find them yourself.

Oh yes. I read the first source that you gave, and explained in great detail why it was not a credible source. I explained how it did not provide any evidence for the statements you made, and asked you some specific questions about how you selected that as your first piece of supporting evidence.

Thus far, you have NOT commented on my concerns about the source, and you have NOT answered my questions about how far you investigated that source before recommending it to us.

Given those two facts, can you explain to me why I should read any further sources that you listed, since your first one has left me with no confidence that they will be accurate, or even relevant?